[clug] Nightmare that is NForce2 on Linux

[Darren Freeman]

Dear List,

I just sent my server back to the computer shop for a new motherboard,
only to find that the symptoms go away under XP.

Motherboard is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe (NForce2).

The main problem is if you do something silly like copy a partition to a
second drive (such as with dd), you lock the machine after a couple of
seconds. Onboard IDE controllers, master to master. I have gotten plenty
of kernel messages about unexpected interrupts before, and I suspect
that I'm generating lots of them when I do heavy I/O. Also using the
onboard LAN ports does the same thing but I just ended up with PCI
cards.

The problem gets worse over time, once upon a time it didn't happen at
all. So I suspect it's a real hardware problem that XP handles more
gracefully than Linux (2.4.22). Convincing the shop to swap motherboards
will be tricky since Linux is going to be the culprit in their eyes.

The binary-only drivers are a real turn-off too.

Anybody else had one of these mobos running Linux? They're supposed to
be the best Athlon motherboard you can get for your typical desktop
machine. But I'm about to recommend that nobody ever try to run Linux on
them. I can't access four of my six USB ports and they lock the machine
with a burner attached. Fortunately IEEE-1394 works perfectly.

Have fun,
Darren